Happy birthday to Resonance FM, which on 1 May 2020 celebrated 18 years of continuous broadcasting on 104.4fm. It is such an achievement after 18 years still to be both an indispensable community radio station and a unique experiment in sound art and arts broadcasting. Congratulations to everyone involved!

There was a day of special broadcasts to mark 18 years on 104.4FM, 1 May 2020, midnight-to-midnight, featuring loads of really great shows, special archive recordings and one-offs. Here’s the schedule.

I was really pleased to be part of this day of celebration, with two pieces neither of which had been broadcast on the radio before.

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05:30 — a never-broadcast radio edit of my short story from A Puppet Show by Steven Hull for Glow: Santa Monica 2013. Steven Hull is a wonderful artist based in LA whose work often includes huge collaborative projects. My story ‘Apocryphal Fragment from the Lives of the Conquistadors’ was commissioned by Steven to be performed as a huge psychedelic puppet show on Santa Monica Beach for the Glow Festival, with accompanying music commissioned from the legendary Gibby Haynes. Gibby and I never spoke or corresponded in advance or compared notes in any way, and we didn’t share anything with Steven, there wasn’t time. Yet when our files crossed over, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing: somehow the words and music seemed to illustrate each other. Interviewed on the record sleeve, Gibby Haynes said that he ‘intentionally did not read the story then was shocked to find out how much the writing inspired the sounds.’ This radio edit brings the two tracks together.

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20:00 — my short story ‘High-Lands’ performed live at the Mechanics’ Institute, Galway for TULCA Festival of Visual Arts 2016. ‘High-Lands’ is performed here with live musical accompaniment from New Pope, joined by Colm Bohan on percussion and Stephen Connolly on organ and guitar. Recorded live at the Galway Mechanics’ Institute, November 11 2016. Sound engineer: John Burke.

‘High-Lands’ was written for radio, and was originally commissioned by London Fieldworks and Resonance 104.4fm as part of Remote Performances, with an original version broadcast live from Outlandia, a unique artists’ field-station in Glen Nevis, Lochaber, Scotland with an improvised live soundscape accompaniment by Johny Brown. Find out more about ‘High-Lands’ here…

Resonance broadcasts on 104.4 FM to central London, DAB to Greater London, nationally on Radioplayer and live streamed to the rest of the world.

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